Car Stereos: Which Amp?, dual voice coil, watts rms

Question
I'm going to purchase the soundstream t5s.  I'm going to get 2 12 inch subs.  in one box.  but i don't know what amp would be good for me to purchase in order to power both subs.  Can you give me a few options of amps for me to look at that would be good to power both subs and that are not overly expensive.

Answer
Hi Mike,

Since the T5 is a dual voice coil 2-ohm sub, a pair of them would combine for a 2-ohm load at the amplifier.  The sub has an RMS power rating of 900 watts.  My rule of thumb is to pick an amp rated between 50% and 100% of the subs' combined rated power. That means you should get good performance with any amplifier rated between 900 watts and 1800 watts RMS at 2 ohms.  

Here are some amps that should work well:

Alpine MRP-M1000
Eclipse ZA1200
JL Audio G-Max
Kicker ZX1500.1
Hifonics BXi2010D or BXi2610D

If you want to stick with Soundstream, the Tarantula TRX1500D or TRX2000D would work well for you.

You might also want to consider splitting the load, and using a pair of 1-ohm stable mono amplifiers instead of a single amplifier running at 2 ohms.  You can probably get more power for your money this way, because amplifiers rated over 1000 watts at 2 ohms are less common, and usually expensive.  Each sub could be used with a single amp rated between about 500 and 900 watts RMS at 1 ohm.  Some amps that would work in this type of system:

Hifonix BXi610 or TXi7508
Orion HCCA-D1200

Hope this helps!

Brian